As a self-proclaimed cinephile, I have seen many Christmas movies, but many more still escape me. Take Jack Frost until not long ago; I only heard about it maybe once before, a long time ago. But it recently popped up on one of the streaming services I pay for (Amazon Prime), and I thought, why not; I might as well expand my horizons with a Christmas film. And with a cast like Michael Keaton, Kelly Preston and Mark Addy, what could go wrong?

And honestly, for the first 40/50 minutes, Jack Frost was a delightful, even if slightly predictable, film. We have the typical “dad works too much and might miss Christmas!” plotline, but here is the thing. Michael Keaton was (and I would argue still is) a charismatic dude, to the point where we should dislike him as the audience (after all, he’s bailing on his son!) I didn’t. What’s more, I understood him, and those scenes we got with him and his son (played by Joseph Cross) felt real because Michael’s character was never too mean/shouty about his mistakes; he sat down with his son and talked to him. That might seem like nothing, but in these Christmas movies, where we usually see this type of conflict, the parent (or the child) can go way too over the top for the main dispute to mean anything.

I also appreciated the inventive cinematography, mainly the snowball fight from the beginning of the film, shot like a war movie, even with some camera angles from the perspective of a snowball. Again, little things, but as they say, they do make the difference because it’s easier to stand out from such an overcrowded market, which in this case are your cookie-cutter Christmas films that are not only the same, but they all tend to look the same too. So I appreciated it when Jack Frost was at least going for something more to latch on to.

The moment I became slightly detached from the film was when Michael Keaton returned as the snowman, aka Jack Frost. That was weird because that should be the main point of this film; dad gets killed and returns the next year as a snowman to make things right. But that was when the film took more of a forced comedy route and started to look and feel more formulaic.

Not to mention the snowman CGI is slightly unnerving. I don’t get spooked easily, but I can understand why some people hate this movie purely because of the CGI alone. One needs to see it in action to comprehend it, as it’s not like it is a creepy design for all of the film, but there are some scenes where the snowman looks more menacing…? It’s hard to describe it correctly; it’s one of those “you just gotta see it to believe it” types of situation.

And these two things took Jack Frost down a peg for me because I don’t know whether I am getting softer as I get older, but I loved the first 40/50 minutes. Before the dad died, I was enjoying the film, whether it was Michael Keaton’s charisma or the stunning beauty of Kelly Preston (it is strange to write about her in the past tense). I was enjoying myself and thought this could potentially become one of those Christmas films I would put on every Christmas season from now on. Now that won’t probably happen, but it’s still a solid movie, and this is where I need to make my last point.

Don’t pay any attention to the rating of this film. For some bizarre reason, Jack Frost is currently rated 5.4/10 on IMDb and only 19% on RottenTomatoes. Sure, the movie is far from flawless, and it can be overly simplistic and sentimental, mainly in the second half, but come on! That is way too low. When I checked those scores after finishing the film, I had to make sure there wasn’t some different version everybody but me watched, but no, most people don’t enjoy this film at all. I would like to know why, especially since we have gotten many, many, many worse Christmas movies that don’t have Michael and Kelly in the titular roles. They also (probably) don’t have a creepy CGI snowman in them too, but that’s beside the point… 😉

Overall, Jack Frost is better than expected Christmas film. I believe; if you can get over the CGI that can be a bit too much at times and some overly sentimental moments, you might enjoy yourself. I can’t say this enough, for some reason, I really liked Michael in this role, at least before he transferred into the snowman because that man is a walking charisma. If you are like me and have never seen Jack Frost, this Christmas would be a good time to fix it. Don’t expect anything spectacular, just your good old-fashioned Hollywood Christmas fluff that is sometimes needed.

Wishing you all Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and whatever else people do or don’t celebrate!

That’s all for this one! Did you see it? What did you think about it? Let me know!

Until next time,

Luke

Practical Magic is the perfect example of a movie, that has everything going for it. From the story/outline (witches exist and live among us) to casting (always had a weak spot for both Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman) everything seems to be where it needs to in order for this film to be a great one. Except there is one tiny thing this movie didn’t do properly – establish any rules! Which, if your main selling point is witches and magic, is kinda important.

What frustrated me with this movie more than anything, is I am not even talking about re-writing the entire thing, or saying the movie overall is not watchable, as it is. Literally only thing that would help out this movie massively, would be inserting two, three lines maximum about the actual powers these witches posses! What can they do? What can’t they do? Is there a limit to their powers?

The reason I am asking these questions, is quite simple. Throughout this movie, our main duo finds themselves in a few situations, where, I don’t know, maybe a bit of magic could help them sort it out within a second, yet they don’t use it…? Or if they use it, they only do minor things…? The problem with any magic being in your movie is you need to spend some time on rules, otherwise the audience can just say something like “Hey, how come they can’t magic their way out of this situation? Oh, they can’t? Because they don’t have that kind of power, huh? Ok, one more question, HOW am I supposed to know that?!”

What hurts even more with this movie is if only those rules were established, Practical Magic could have been one of those movie I would love to go back to, every once in a while, as everything else is great. The cast is great, the story is fairly compelling, but the longer it goes, the more questions you have and the end… ok, let’s talk about the ending here, because Jesus on a pogo stick, that was confusing.

Beware, SPOILERS are coming!

The entire film we see how all people in this small town are afraid of this family, how it’s “public secret” this family are witches and how some of them even hate them because of it. Yet, when they need “help” to create a coven of witches, so the last spell would work, suddenly, plenty of those same women are only one phone call away to help them out…? First of all, what?! How? How did the family manage to persuade them to suddenly help them out? Also, does that mean all the women that came out to help out are also witches, therefore were hating their own kind? And if not, if they are just “regular ass women”, would they posses any power to actually help out the witches with their spell in the first place? So many questions. I know the movie is trying to have this all empowering message about unity, womanhood and all that, which is great and all, but not in this instance, as it doesn’t feel earned. It feels like somebody cut out a good hour or so of the movie that explained everything, just for the fun of it, with no real reason behind it.

Practical Magic to me is a flawed movie, that had potential and all the elements of being a pretty great film in it, just the people making it didn’t fully grasp the potential. To me, these are the movies we should remake (I mean, if the studios really can’t come up with something original and we have to have remakes of movies in the first place) – the movies that had potential, that had good stories, that could have done with somebody different going over the material and making it better. Don’t tamper with well beloved films people already managed to make great, give chance to movies like this! I could easily imagine this today, as the story doesn’t need any changing, just again, give it to somebody, who would establish some rules within the universe and you are almost there. All the “hard work” has been done, we just need to iron out the details.

If you aren’t a fan of either Sandra or Nicole, first of all, why? Second, and most importantly of all, deduct one star from my final rating, as those two working so well together is the only reason my rating is as high as it is. Sometimes, my brain says one thing, but my heart and soul can’t fully hate a movie with two of them in it. 🙂

That’s all for this one! Did you see it? What did you think about it? Let me know!

Until next time,

Luke